eftpos is edging closer to delivering its own digital payment system for online and mobile transactions - essentially, a PayPal alternative - although consumers aren't expected to have access to the system before November 2014.  The company announced in May this year that it was working with C-SAM to develop a digital wallet. Yesterday, it revealed that it had partnered with Commonwealth Bank, Bendigo and Adelaide Bank and retail giant Coles on a series of trials that would let people use the wallet either on their mobile phones or via a computer's browser to make eftpos payments in-store or online. About 50 merchants are to be invited to participate in the trial.eftpos managing director Bruce Mansfield said there were four technical elements involved - the wallet, the digital payments cloud (where the card-based data will be stored), an interface to the payments system and the payments system itself. He said that the trial announced yesterday focused on the first two elements, which would allow payments to be made securely without any card details being provided to the merchant.In October, eftpos said it was working on a payments hub to replace the bilateral networks between banks and retailers that have underpinned eftpos payments thus far. It is not expected to go live before late 2015, so, initially, the digital payments system will plug into the current eftpos payments web.With regard to its digital payments system, Mansfield said that eftpos' approach was to be as technology agnostic as possible - so the system could, in the future, be used on any smartphone. This will allow contactless in-store payment to be facilitated using a range of technologies, including Near Field Communications chips (either built into the phone or through a sticker on the phone), Bluetooth or QR codes.Unlike the mobile payments systems unveiled last week by Commonwealth Bank and Westpac, EMV information from payment cards will not stored on secure elements in the phones themselves but in the eftpos payments cloud, which can be accessed either from a browser or a smartphone application.Mansfield said, in regard to the wallet itself, that this could be an eftpos-branded wallet, a bank-branded wallet or a white-label wallet that was branded for, say, a particular retailer.The challenge for eftpos is that by the time its system is finally available to Australian consumers it will be entering an increasingly crowded payments market where people have got used to alternatives such as PayPal and even virtual currencies. But Mansfield seemed unfazed, saying that there was significant momentum for an eftpos online payments solution. He also claimed that a clear winner in mobile payments technology had yet to emerge, which means the field is still open to new entrants.